Patrick Takahashi doesn't estimate the situation correctly

Uppdate,

I realised that I forgot to counter the 5th argument by Takahashi. I have now added it.

In the Huffington post Patrick Takahashi flaunts some misconceptions about nuclear and the technological impact the Fukushima accident will have on future new builds. We will take a look at some of the flaws here on his 4 point list.

1. Economics
Patric states that due to increasing regulatory demands on nuclear after this accident the price of nuclear will escalate into the industries oblivion. But that doesn't necessarily have to be the case and should not be the case of the issue is treated rationally by the regulatory bodies. What Fukushima has shown us is that one can not rely on emergency diesel generators for core cooling and that spent fuel pools are sensitive. Let's look into those two issues.

Emergency core cooling, a core needs to be cooled even after shutdown due to the decay heat from fission products. The typical way to design a plant is to have several redundant diesel generators that can supply power to the coolant pumps. The vulnerability is if one accident can take out all diesel generators at the same time, like the tsunami did in Fukushima. The solution to this problem is not to build dramatically expensive sources of back up power that will rack up costs, the solution is to design the core itself so that it can be cooled passively by natural convection etc. This solution will reduce cost since it reduces the need for piping and backup generators. Both the AP1000 and the ESBWR are already designed with that in mind. The EPR however might be dead in the water.

Spent fuel pools, the cooling needs of a spent fuel pool is smaller than for a reactor and the possibility of rigging up a passive cooling system is easier. One can also easily increase the safety by putting up a sturdy roof above the pool that can handle terrorist attacks. This change will not dramatically increase cost. Having centralized spent fuel pools deep under the rock, like in the Swedish CLAB facility, also ensures safety and limits the necessary changes to the on-site pools. In short make pools passively cooled and move spent fuel assemblies to a centralized location as soon as possible.

2. LiabilityFor some unknown reason Patric mentions the cost of the entire Tsunami disaster in his discussion about liability. I have a very hard time understanding what impact the 200 billion dollars in tsunami damage will have on nuclear insurances. A better comparison would be to point at TMI. The clean up after TMI cost around 1 billion dollars. The cost of the Fukushima accident per reactor should not be vastly much more than this unless the situation deteriorates significantly. Any rational insurance company would treat nuclear like anything else, do a probabilistic assessment and figure out a cost per kWh produced. This number is very small based on any reasonable analysis. The problem is that the total cost of an accident might very well overwhelm an insurance company. But that is no different from a major accident in hydropower(banqiao), refineries, chemical plants(Bhopal) etc. The insurance model used for those industries should also be used for nuclear. For reactors that are meltdown proof like pebble bed reactors or molten salt reactors the insurance cost would be very low indeed.

3. The attitude of the public

This is a tricky issue, the attitude of the public usually is very distant from reality. Right now we don't know if the public will see this as a spectacular failure of nuclear and as proof of its danger, or as a spectacular demonstration of how nuclear can withstand the worst of accidents without causing large scale damage to its surrounding. The real environmental and public health impact of the Fukushima accident is likely to be much less than the fire in the Japanese refineries. China's decision to halt approval is a completely rational response to new data, its unlikely that they will downsize their nuclear ambitions.

4. Freshwater
This point is, I am sorry to say, absurd. Patric states that the French nuclear reactors together consume half of the fresh water of France. However we have to separate between plants using cooling towers where water is acctually evaporated and plants using once through cooling where water is passed through and then returned to the river or lake a few degrees hotter. 32 plants in France use cooling towers and 26 use once through cooling. Patrick links to this article by Chellaney which states that the rectors in France use 19 billion cubic meters of water per year. According to WNA the water consumption for a plant with cooling towers is roughly 4 liters per kWh of produced electricity. Thus one can with some simple arithmetic see that 19 billion cubic meters of water is enough to produce almost 4750 TWh of electricity. That is the power production of almost 550 1GWe nuclear reactors. Obviously the number claimed is utter nonsense since France only have about 50 reactors and if even a fraction of those 19 billion cubic meter is actually used by nuclear then most of it is returned to the body of water it was taken from.

5. Worst case scenario.

Patrick speculates on what would have happened if Fukushima had exploded like Chernobyl. In my eyes this is a question that invites to fearmongering and requires some attention. First and foremost the accident in Chernobyl was a criticality accident, the chain reaction itself got out of control and the power of the reactor increased by orders of magnitude. In essence one had a nuclear explosion. In Fukushima such an even is physically impossible, the problem there is to take care of the decay heat from the reactor and the worst thing that can happen are various forms of hydrogen or steam explosions. Not nearly as powerful or catastrophic as the Chernobyl explosion. There is no conceivable way for plutonium to spread out of the reactor in large amounts. In Chernobyl the main problem was iodine in the short term(the weeks following the accident) and now cesium, strontium and other fission products, even though Chernobyl certainly did have plutonium in its core, any nuclear reactor creates plutonium during its operation. Plutonium and other transuranic elements simply do not spread very well, they are not soluble in water, they tend to form particles to heavy to be spread by wind and in the form of oxides(like nuclear fuel is) they don't chemically react with much of anything. Plants can not easily incorporate them either so there is no natural pathway for plutonium to end up in food. IAEA explains this very well in their Chernobyl legacy report. Cesium-137 is the issue in Chernobyl and any other reactor accident, plutonium never had, and wont in the future have, any significant impact. For some reason plutonium has turned into the nuclear bogeyman without any factual reason for such fear.

On a more positive note George Monbiot is turning into a very outspoken voice of reason.

Very good points. I would think a global TV debate would be of interest, except maybe for one problem. Nuclear power is very similar to religion. You either believe in it or don't. No one really gets convinced by facts or hyperbole, and I admit I did use some doozies. I actually have a nuclear background, albeit fusion, and think well of the thorium cycle. Aloha.

Yes, nuclear power needs to be discussed continuously. And as you say: the problem today is that many people have beliefs and opinions about it, but the public is grieviously underinformed on the issue. We see a great problem in that people who hold hard knowledge - especially within the nuclear utilities, radiation safety authorities and science/academia - don't dare to speak up in this issue! This network - Nuclear Power Yes Please - wouldn't even exist if they hadn't been so reluctant to speak up.

This issue needs to be taken seriously... and not very many do that. We don't really care if anyone is pro or anti as long as they use proper arguments and conduct an honest well-meaning debate. But we are not there at the moment.

Therefore Patrick it makes me very happy to see that you are willing to engage in a dialogue on nuclear power. Thank you very much for stopping by.

@Patrick:
You have a point in the religious debate.
However, the problem with such debates is that one side usually arguments from a factual perspecitve, whereas the other from belief and feelings.

In the nuclear debate that is very much the case:
Anti-nuclear argumentation is far to often connected to the feelings that radiation is "bad" and nucelar fission is "dirty", renewables are much "better" etc. The best factual arguments I have seen is economical statements on how much different sources of power costs to build and run, where there is a debate, from both sides, with figures and reports from different angles.

At least here on NPYP we do try to take in fact against nuclear power, and we have on numerous occasions spoken with anti-nuclear debateurs, and even written artciles WITH them.
This is a loose network, and we strive to get a factual debate on Nuclear power (both fission and fusion).

Above you have some talkbacks to your article, but when it comes to point 4 and 5 surely you must realize that they are very exaggurated and that putting fact into it will invalidate them !?

Klas what you say simply isn't true if one checks the answer to Takahashi above one sees a lot of arguments based on belief and feelings. And some totally false "facts" like for instance the cost of closing down Fukushima "

"The clean up after TMI cost around 1 billion dollars. The cost of the Fukushima accident per reactor should not be vastly much more than this unless the situation deteriorates significantly."

TMI was a much less serious accident and 1 billion dollars times 4 (or six) 30 years ago equals a lot more money today. Especially as the equipment materials and people who can handle the mess at Fukushima are limited in quantity and supply.

Using WNA to prove points is typical of nuclearlobbyists "The World Nuclear Association is the international private-sector organization supporting the people, technology, and enterprises that comprise the global nuclear energy industry.
WNA members include the full range of enterprises involved in producing nuclear power – from uranium miners to equipment suppliers to generators of electricity."

The TMI cost is in, if I remember correctly, 2005 dollars. Notice also that I said "unless the situation deteriorates significantly". Which mean that as of right now it doesn't seem like the cost will vastly exceed the TMI cost. I don't present it as a fact. When we know more about how large areas has gotten contaminated by cesium etc then it will be easier to make an accurate estimate.

As for the water consumption and WNA. If you really believe WNA and the nuclear industry lies about such a basic thing as water consumption, then I really don't know what to say to you. Do you also avoid going to doctors since they have an economic incentive for you continuing to be sic?

"One billion dollars was spent to defuel the facility. Three months of nuclear power production at TMI-2 has cost close to $2 billion dollars in construction and cleanup bills; or the equivalent of over $10.6 million for every day TMI-2 produced electricity. The above mentioned costs do not include nuclear decontamination and decommissioning or restoring the site to “Greenfield."

I never once disputed that it might be higher than TMI. What I wrote was to quote myself:

"The cost of the Fukushima accident per reactor should not be vastly much more than this unless the situation deteriorates significantly."

And with that I mean it is unlikely it will be orders of magnitude more than TMI per reactor. You are attacking a strawman and not my original argument. Orders of magnitude is the only thing one can talk about at this point in time.

It would be similar to me saying "I drank about 10 liters yesterday" and you replying "You are wrong, I am sure it was 12 liters".

But it will no doubt cost vastly much more and you actually wrote "should not be vastly more than TMI"
As for your comparision between this and drinking you are way off both in figures and the analogy in itself.

Of course it is in your interest to keep the cost down on the Fukushima accident. Nobody in your circles is interested in hearing something closer to the truth.

Since you don’t even comprehend what I wrote or why I wrote it lets make an example. The issue was liability and insurance cost.

If we assume the cost of Fukushima will be either 1 billion or 10 billion per reactor we end up with total ranging from 4 to 40 billion dollars. If we put this as a cost per kWh produced in japan we end up with a range of 0.055 to 0.55 cents per kWh(cumulative electricity production in japan from nuclear is about 7200 billion Kwh). So even if the cost of the accident per reactor is 10 times higher than it was for TMI it will still have an impact that by no means make nuclear electricity uncompetitive.

The cost per reactor would have to get 2 orders of magnitue more expensive per reactor than TMI to actually have a real impact on nuclear electricity costs.

That is what I mean by not vastly different. In the same order of magnitude. I suggest you get a dictionary and actually learn what the words mean before you make straw-men and attack them.

In reality one should use the cumulative electricity production of the worlds light water reactor fleet to make the estimate since that is the actual measure of the probability of an accident of this magnitude per kWh produced so far.

Or one could take the approach to make the insurance cost estimate design specific, which would be more rational and it would show the mark-1 design is so flawed that no body wants to ensure it. Which should be the case since it is a 50 year old design.

1. You are doing a fair amount of cherry picking and got one comment upon which you base your case ?
2. ...and that argument, about cleanup costs, Johan doing an estimate: In which way is that connecte to "belief" or "feelings" ?
The assumption about costs may be wrong yes - but it is a debatable figure upon which one can reason, comparing it to other similar incidents etc.
It is not the same as "I am afraid of radiation" or "I do not believe that nuclear pwoer has a future"

@Per: If you state: "The cost of cleaning up Fukushima will not end up less than 100 bilj SEK" - then that is ok - but you must also back that statement up !! For instance by comparing to Tjernobyl etc

KlausK : "and that argument, about cleanup costs, Johan doing an estimate: In which way is that connecte to “belief” or “feelings” ?"
Well he seems to have a feeling for the cost more than facts, as I already have pointed out this will cost far more than he wish it will cost. And if you read on in his reply to Takahashi he uses a lot of his own beliefs and feelings as counterarguments more than facts.

"Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant crippled by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami earlier this month, will not be subject to a disclaimer that relieves utilities from paying compensation in connection with nuclear power plant accidents caused by devastating natural disasters, the government's top spokesman said Friday.

Such an exemption from liability is ''impossible under current social circumstances,'' Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said at a press conference.

The law on such compensation carries a waiver clause under which the government, rather than a nuclear power plant operator, would pay compensation for damage caused by a nuclear accident resulting from ''an unusually huge natural disaster or a social upheaval.''

The contract between the government and TEPCO sets an upper limit for compensation of 120 billion yen. Compensation beyond the limit would have to be borne by the company in principle if the waiver clause is not applied."

Seems perfectly reasonable to me. Its a combined failure of the safety authority in not demanding TEPCO to put proper filters connected to the containments and from TEPCO it not doing it voluntary anyway.

Tokyo Electric's Damaged Reactors May Take 30 Years, $12 Billion to Scrap

Damaged reactors at the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant may take three decades to decommission and cost operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. more than 1 trillion yen ($12 billion), engineers and analysts said.

“It looks indisputable that Tepco will go ahead and dismantle the four reactors, and costs may exceed 1 trillion yen,” said Murakami, who worked at Japan Atomic for 13 years and was involved in the decommissioning of the Tokai plant. “Removing damaged fuels from the reactors may take more than two years, and any delays would further increase the cost.”

So the estimated cost according to that article falls in the lower part of the range I made in a comment, meaning that it wont effect the cost of nuclear in Japan very much. It might make TEPCO go bankrupt though, which I don't think anyone will shed any tears over